Demons Undone: The Sons of Gulielmus Series (61 page)

That casual touch imparted a sense of calm, safety. She didn’t know if it was due to his magic again, or just his proximity in general, but she liked it. It’d been so long since she’d walked side by side with any man in this way. Shaun had always walked in front of her at his usual aggressive pace, or behind her, lagging while he pounded out one text message after another. At times she’d felt like they weren’t even a couple, or that perhaps her expectations were misaligned. That maybe she was trying to feel things that weren’t possible.

No. She felt it more now from a stranger whose name she’d known for an hour than she had in three years with her ex.

Something was very wrong—or very right. She didn’t know which, but as she slipped her key into the lock, she vowed to find out.

Claude stepped across the threshold into the quiet, air-conditioned living room and froze there on the doormat.

He could smell it. Brimstone and ozone. But whose? The scent was similar to the one his father left when he teleported out of a place, but somehow the signature was off. Besides, what would he have been doing there? Even if Papa had learned about Gail that quickly, he would have stayed put until he’d confronted her—or Claude.

This had to be someone else—someone who’d gotten too close to Gail, and probably for no good reason.

Gail gave him a little nudge. “Move, please. I don’t want to air condition the entire complex.”

“Sorry.” He moved farther into the room, only because the person who’d left evidence of the visit was no longer there. Claude would be able to feel him or her. If it’d been Papa, he wouldn’t have been able to get close without Claude knowing. That was part of the parent-child bond between demons and their spawn. Most of the time, Papa could psychically track his children and teleport to wherever they were. He did it all the time to his dozens of half-breed children who still toed the line and performed their assigned tasks. They were all incubi and succubi, including Claude, and they were supposed to be out seducing bodies and blackening souls.

Claude scoffed and scanned each corner of the small studio apartment.

Wanton, meaningless sex. He’d been sick of that for years, even before he’d known Laurette. Since he didn’t have to resort to intercourse to mark a soul, most of the time he’d do his job without his pants ever coming off. He’d never tell Charles or John, but the truth was Claude hadn’t gotten laid in about five years. The more years that passed, the more discriminating he became. Less desperate.

Most of his legion of siblings weren’t so picky, but lately he’d learned he wasn’t the only one so thoroughly plagued by discontent. He’d assumed that all cambions went dark almost immediately—that they got that taste of power and didn’t want to change. He’d thought Charles was the only other one fighting it. But it turned out there were many others like them, terrified of what they could become and worried that if they fully embraced their demonic sides, there’d be no turning back.

Gail turned on the lights in the small kitchen and paused in front of the counter. She pressed a flashing button on her cordless phone’s base, and when a man’s voice boomed through the speakers, she deleted it, mumbling, “Give up, fucker,” two words into the message: “
Hi, Gail …
”

She deleted the rest of the messages unheard and pulled the refrigerator door open. “You sure about that Cheerwine?”

Maybe she didn’t care about her voicemails, but his curiosity sure as shit was piqued. There were only a few types of people who got the delete-unheard treatment: telemarketers, bill collectors, and estranged family members. Somehow, she’d been conditioned to not even listen.

Interesting.

She put a fist on her hip and smirked. “If Cheerwine really won’t do it for you, I might have some Crystal Light packets left over from my last failed dieting effort.”

He eyed her from ankles to neck, admiring some parts longer than others. It was all quite nice, but there was something to be said about a woman with a cinched waist and generous hips. Those indentations above her hipbones were the perfect place to rest his hands as he …

Letting the thought flit away, he dragged his hand across his brow and took a deep breath. Fuck. She was going to have him hard as a flagpole and just as upright in under a minute, and he did
not
want to go there.

He leaned against the island, effectively hiding his arousal.

“I’m glad you failed,” he said. “I happen to like skin and bones, but only on my fried chicken.” He held up the bottle of gin. “Cheerwine. I won’t back out if you don’t.”

“Brave man. I like it,” she said with a chuckle, and pulled a two-liter bottle from the shelf.

No, not brave. Maybe a little reckless, but that wasn’t just in regards to soda. He set the gin bottle on the counter and stuffed his hands into his pockets, watching her flit about the kitchen. She pulled out an ice tray and glasses, and he pulled at the psychic tethers between him and his father. Maybe Papa would know who’d breached Gail’s space.

Papa wasn’t close. Not even a little close. Claude pushed his mental shield back up and watched her pour the dark red soda into the cups.

About fifty percent of his half-demon half-siblings had defected from the demonic ranks recently. Word about John’s act of rebellion had spread. People heard about how Charles, arguably Papa’s favorite son, had given the old demon a figurative fuck-you. He’d married a woman from a family known to be enemies to demons, and then taunted Papa about it. Just like Claude, Charles had run out of fucks to give.

And one by one, their siblings were giving up the jobs they’d done competently for so long, choosing to go into hiding instead of corrupting innocents for power. But a cambion couldn’t just walk away from his or her Hellish obligations. There wasn’t a contract that could be broken, no out clause. If they quit and were tracked down, they’d be killed. Defectors paid a high penance for choosing to be good—or, at least,
better
. There was no turning back for people from that side. Angels and minor gods could go “neutral” if they gave up their stations, but not demons.

He didn’t make the rules, but he damn sure tried to stay ahead of them.

“Why did you have a bottle of Bombay in your Jeep, anyway?” Gail pushed the glasses toward him, and he uncapped the bottle. “You seem more like a Wild Turkey kind of guy.”

She was insightful, but Laurette had been, too. A soul couldn’t just turn off the intuition it’d fought so hard to earn over eons.

“My brother-in-law left it in there the last time I gave him a lift. He’s got money to burn, so I doubt he misses it.”

“Brother-in-law, huh? Does that mean you have a sister in addition to the brothers you mentioned, or a wife with a brother?”

He managed to turn his back before he chuckled. He couldn’t put an exact figure on how many half-sisters he had, and he only spoke to three of the girls with any regularity—John’s full sisters.

“Don’t beat around the bush,
chéri
. No wife, no girlfriend. The woman I spend the most time with lately is my niece Ruby. She likes me far more than I deserve, and I must say, being someone’s favorite is nice. And yeah, this particular
sister
is married to a werewolf.” An alpha werewolf that turned downright vicious when it came to protecting his extended family, demons and all. Calvin Wolff had been instrumental in helping Claude, Charles, and John relocate their defecting siblings to safety. He’d taken time off from his busy baseball schedule to do it because it’d meant that much to his wife.

“You’re shitting me.”

He turned in time to see her shudder. “What’s wrong?”

“Witches and wolves don’t play nice. When wolves are around us, they go into some sort of vicious killing spree.”

The fuck? He shook his head slowly. “Um, not true. That’s an urban legend, and probably what your parents
want
you think so you don’t go home and get impregnated by some beast that howls at the moon.”

She swallowed audibly, and he couldn’t restrain his laughter. “Sounds about right,” she said.

“The truth is that they’re harmless unless you threaten them in some way.” Or when they lost their shirts playing poker. They had that “sore losers” thing down pat.

“Good to know.” She pushed a full glass down the counter to him.

He took it, sipped, and cringed. She made her drinks strong, and combined with the gin’s fiery burn, he may as well have been swallowing a cough drop set ablaze.

She didn’t seem affected by the concoction’s syrupy taste. She sipped and stared into her glass. “They’re so damned secretive, the wolves. Up until I was around thirteen, I thought they were just a legend like the tooth fairy.”

The tooth fairy wasn’t a legend, but he didn’t bother correcting her. There were just too few fairies to go around nowadays, and besides, the system was too complicated to explain in a few words. He’d prefer to discuss more personal things.

“How’d you learn otherwise?” he asked.

“Summer camp out in the mountains. One of the little girls in my cabin—God, she couldn’t have been more than eight or nine—must have gone into puberty early. She walked out of the cabin around midnight. I thought she was sleepwalking, because she’d been doing it all week, and I wanted to make sure she was all right. The counselor was dead to the world, and so I woke my little sister up. We followed her to the woods and no sooner had she passed into the tree line did she start screaming. We ran over to her, thinking maybe she’d stepped on something sharp and that she was in pain, but … with our hands on her she just …
shifted
. She lay there in her wolf form shaking and cowering, and what else could we do but stay there with her? We petted her and talked to her, and when the sun came up, she was back. Her mom picked her up that day and she didn’t return. No idea what happened to her. I’d look her up if I knew her last name.”

“Describe her to me later. I’ll have my brother-in-law ask around. The wolf group in this part of the country isn’t that large, and she’s probably a part of it.”

“I’d love to find out what she’s up to these days, but shit …” She eased away from the counter, and sauntered past him into the living area.

He followed, somewhat involuntarily. When she walked, she wiggled, and he liked that wiggle very much. It was hypnotizing, the way her ass swayed. With one malicious swing, she could have him walking off the edge of a cliff, and just before he hit the bottom, he wouldn’t have a damn thing to say for himself, but, “Oh, well. I tried to be good.” Damn, he was trying so hard to be good—to respect what he’d had with Laurette. Gail was going to be hard to resist.

“Can you imagine having to isolate yourself so normal people don’t find out what you are? It’s different with witches. We’re not outwardly different. We can hide our light under a bushel, I guess, and no one has to ever know we’re freaks.” She swirled the burgundy liquid around in her glass and stared into the tumbler again. “I never felt comfortable enough to tell my ex. He never knew, and never will.”

Claude settled onto the sofa a couple of feet from her and set his glass on the plain pine coffee table. It was knotty and gnarled and looked like the sort of starter furniture people put together with tiny disposable wrenches. It was the sort of table that did just fine in a pinch, but would be immediately replaced as soon as a person settled into their
forever
home.

Her entire apartment, at least what he could see of it, was furnished that way. It was tastefully decorated and personalized, but had no sense of permanence. There were pictures arranged on the tables, but not hung on the walls. She’d rolled a rug onto the hardwood floor, but beyond a couple of test swatches, hadn’t finished painting. The bookshelves were nearly empty, although she had to have lived in this place for quite some time. A woman like her would have cookbooks and possibly a grimoire or two. A lot of witches kept their spell books hidden in plain sight for easy access. He kept his and his mother’s in his computer, though most of the spells he cast and talismans he made were entirely by memory now. Same shit over and over again. His freelance gig—creating protective charms and blending potions designed to temporarily boost certain human attributes—was becoming increasingly routine. He could have been an accountant for all the excitement.

He drummed his fingertips on his thighs and blew out a breath. Fuck excitement. At this stage in his life, he wanted to wake up in the same bed more than two days in a row curled up next to the same woman.

He’d hoped it’d be this woman.

He
craved
having a boring life. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem he’d be getting that. Plus, someone had been skulking around her apartment, and he felt responsible for it. He wasn’t going to let her out of his sight until he found out who and why.

She shifted on her end of the sofa and cleared her throat. “Oh, come on. The drink’s not
that
bad.”

The fuck it wasn’t. He grinned. “Sorry, my mind wanders. But, listen, there are a lot of different kinds of beings out there you’ve probably never imagined or encountered,
chéri
.” Him being one. Witch, she’d understand, but that other part?

She canted her head again and narrowed her eyes. “And you’ve encountered them?”

“Almost every day, especially in my line of work. I practice magic freelance,” he said, preempting her question when she opened her mouth. “They come looking for me.”

And some feared him, but in a different way than they feared Papa. They feared him the way people used to fear his mother. She was a woman not to be trifled with, and the victims of her scorn often spent years trying to earn back her favor.

Most failed.

Claude’s ego didn’t need to be stoked in that way, and he knew better than anyone that people fucked up sometimes. He didn’t hold grudges, except for that one case. His father.

The truth was, if it came down to a battle between him and Papa, Papa may very well lose … but the mess they made during the fight might create irreparable damage—including innocent bystander casualties.